This invention relates to the field of voice mail and answering machines and, more specifically, to the area of enhancing calling party control of message content.
Many, if not most, telephone subscribers have some form of message service that records a message when no one answers the telephone. This service may be in the form of an answering machine connected to the telephone line at the customer premise or may be a voice mail system in the public switched telephone network (PSTN). This service has enabled subscribers to perform many tasks and leave information without actually having to be physically present.
A problem with these voice mail systems, however, is that as soon as the calling party hangs up, frequently he or she wants to or needs to change the message. For example, a meeting time may change or may have been stated incorrectly in the original message.
Currently, the only thing that a calling party can do is record a second message and hope that the called party listens to all messages before acting on the first message. Furthermore, there are situations where a person""s voice mail system becomes overloaded and the voice mail server or the answering machine no longer accepts messages. In these cases, the calling party cannot correct the message at all.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for allowing calling parties to change or cancel a previously recorded voice mail message.
This problem is solved and a technical advance is achieved in the art by a system and method that enables the calling party to change the content of previously recorded voice mail messages. This advance is achieved by a voice mail system that receives incoming telephone calls and compares an incoming caller ID with caller ID""s stored in conjunction with previous messages. If a caller ID of the incoming call matches a caller ID in the database, (i.e., the calling party has previously left a message) then the calling party is presented with a menu of options. The menu may include determining whether the called party has listened to the message, deleting the message, modifying the message and/or recording a new message. In this manner, a calling party can change or modify a previously recorded message and determine whether the message has been received by the called party, thus providing a more flexible interface for leaving messages.